Sunday, January 10, 2016

Race and belief in evolution

When people cite stats that seem to show that Americans are dumb, I suspect that many people get a mental image of a redneck. I discussed in an earlier post that some people think Republicans are dumb even though the data contradicts this. In all probability, white liberals are comparing themselves with white hicks and conveniently forgetting that a big chunk of their party is made up of low IQ blacks and Latinos. I'm willing to bet that with controversial attitudes that suggest intelligence or the lack of it, non-Asian minorities often have the worst numbers. Let's try belief in evolution as a first try.

General Social Survey respondents were asked in 2012, "According to the theory of evolution, human beings, as we know them today, developed from earlier species of animals. Is that true or false?" Here are the answers for white, blacks and people of Mexican ancestry:

Percent answering false (N = 390)

Black 33.3
Mexican 27.3
White 18.4

Blacks are almost twice as likely as whites to believe we did not develop from earlier species. People of Mexican descent reject science here at 1 1/2 times the rate of whites.

By the way, these percentages are lower than the--what--40 percent number cited as the percent of Americans who reject evolution.

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"I often say that when you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind; it may be the beginning of knowledge, but you have scarcely, in your thoughts, advanced to the stage of science, whatever the matter may be." ~ Lord Kelvin